PresentingjAlbum15

I’m proud to introduce jAlbum 15 to you. jAlbum 15 offers a smorgasbord of improvements from the inside out. It’s hard to pinpoint one specific feature that stands out. What matters most to you depends on your needs. Software that’s been around this long (jAlbum is from 2002) is sometimes accused of being bloated with features. We therefore just don’t want to add stuff that only 1% of the users may use at the expense of clarity. I’m therefore happy to say that jAlbum 15 has been reworked and cleaned-up to be faster, more robust, handle images better, take less disk space, look better and be more intuitive. On top of this, there are new features too :-). Let’s present some highlights! As always, you can read the full story in our release notes. Oh, we offer 30 new trial days for everyone so you can try it out fully. If you’re on an active support & update plan, it’s a free update. If you’re not, we offer discounted updates.Just sign in first.

360° images

jAlbum now supports 360° images. These images puts you in the location the image was taken. You’re now free to look at the surroundings from any angle. There are no frames! Don’t disregard this as a gimmick. Even though the concept has been known for years, ease of use and quality has gradually increased and prices dropped significantly. Basically every camera manufacturer now offers such a camera. There are good models available for under $300. In September, Team jAlbum were invited to Bol, Croatia by Roni Marinkovic – a long time jAlbum user and skin developer. We enjoyed conferencing (well...), photographing, filming, eating, drinking, diving and windsurfing. Let us share our memories in 360° in this gallery (the 360° images are those with comments). Our “Tiger” skin is currently the only in-house skin supporting 360 images, but our community is also delivering support for this. See https://jalbum.net/skins.

Hard link support

Can you imagine the disk size of an album dropping from 400MB to 10MB while presenting the same images? It may sound like magic, but is now possible through a technique called “hard links” and is supported by most modern file systems on Windows, Mac and Linux. If activated (under Preferences → Album), jAlbum will no longer make copies of original images, videos and skin resource files that’s included in an album. Instead "hard links" will be generated. Don’t confuse them with symbolic links and their limitations. Read more in our help pages!

Better looking theme images

Theme images are the usually wide header images that appear on top of galleries made with the Turtle and Tiger skins for instance. In jAlbum 15 it’s now possible to select a theme image that’s different from the image that represents that folder in the parent level (the “folder thumbnail”). This is important as it’s often hard to find one single image that both fits a square folder thumbnail and wide theme size.

We’ve also made it easier to select the focus for cropping the theme image. Hopefully no more “chopped heads” in theme images anymore. All this has been implemented in a new intuitive “folder property panel” that’s appearing to the right of the thumbnails in jAlbum’s explore view. Just drag and drop images onto the two drop areas of the property panel to select representing folder image and theme image. The new folder property panel also makes it more intuitive and faster to enter folder specific titles and descriptions. The panel can be minimized or enlarged to fit your needs.

Improved image processing

jAlbum 15 has new code for image loading and scaling, providing better compatibility with oddly formatted JPEG images and improving scaling quality to match the best competition on the market. Just select “Smooth” scaling quality under Settings → Images and then choose from one of the four new super high quality algorithms presented. Here’s a tricky sample image scaled with the “Standard” smooth algorithm and now with the “Blackman-Sinc” algorithm. Pay attention to the rightmost wire:

Adapted for HiDPI screens

Today we see more and more HiDPI / “retina” screens. That means screens having significantly smaller pixels. On Windows, using jAlbum on such screens has been a drag as the user interface didn’t compensate for the smaller pixel size. With jAlbum 15 this long standing problem has now been addressed. Enjoy!

PS: Mac and Linux versions already handle this.

jAlbum’s user interface was previously not adapted for HiDPI screens

Now properly adapted for HiDPI screens

This was just some highlights from jAlbum 15. As always, check out our release notes for a full list of enhancements and fixes. Remember, we offer 30 new trial days for all users, so check it out now!

I have used jAlbum for heaven knows how long, I know I dont experiment enough and it has been just wonderful watching this grow over the years and it really is amazing how far it has come. The behind the scenes work and dedication is very much appreciated. Thank You to everybody involved, as it's a stunning example of what can be achieved if you really want to do something that pushes the limits. Regards Peter